Blog 52 - PRELIMINARY: Bloopers of the mini film

 Bloopers of the mini film

We hope you loved our mini movie, and now it’s time for the fun part..BLOOPERS! We had so much fun making this film, and hope to make many more in the future. But for now..let’s focus on this amazingly funny bloopers video! 

Bloopers / BTS

As you can see from the title of this YouTube video, it’s behind the scenes clips and bloopers in one! I will say it was super hard for me to not laugh at his cousin because he basically unrecognizable in the costume.  Other than that, we did have so much fun making this film and hope to make many more in the future that are even better than this one!

Reflection 

All in all, even though this was fun to film, we did have our negatives to this film. Our group really wanted to get a fog machine to add to this film, but they were so expensive! Literally almost $100 for one fog machine that we would only use once. So obviously we didn’t get that. 

For the blood splatter, we wanted a thicker stream of blood, and something darker but the fake blood we got in a bottle wasn’t able to create that splatter look, so we had to settle for the spray fake blood. 

I feel if we had access to better supplies, this film would’ve been top tier. But, since we’re on a broke high school student budget this is all we could do. I feel given the budget we had, we did amazing and it turned out great.

Blog 51 - PRELIMINARY: Final Products!

 Final Products!

As you may have seen in the last blogs, we’ve been working very hard on this little scene here. We want this to be greater than ever since now we’re in A level, and it should look better this year. In this blog, you’ll find the instagram post, the film festival flyer, and the mini film itself!

Film Festival Flyer

Here is the finished product of the film festival flyer! We hope you like it because this entire project took us all weekend to finalize. We had to have our killer (which was Adrian’s cousin) take this picture at his house because we had previously forgotten to take it while he was on set. Then, once he sent over the picture we were able to edit it in both the film flyer and instagram story mock-up! 

Instagram Story mock-up

We figured since this was a horror / gory type of film, it would be perfect to release this on October 31st which everyone knows is Halloween! As you can see, we named this film “Slaughter Shed” because this killer is supposed to kill people for pure fun - as a hobby one would say. He kidnaps people, brings them to his shed, and kills them. This is was the scene in the movie is depicting. 

The Finalized movie scene

This is our final miniature movie! We are very proud of this, as our group has never done anything this gory before. We believe our new group is much better at all of this because of the team we built that actually works together! 

In this film, you’ll see the killer Jerry who is actually Adrian’s cousin Enmanuel. Then, you’ll see the kidnapped girl tied up and that is me, Tatiana! Last but not least, the person filming is Adrian! We hope you love the film, and keep yourself updated for the bloopers!

Blog 50 - PLANNING: Day 1 Update

 Day 1 Update

Today, me and my partner Adrian went to Spirit Halloween after school. This is so we could get props for the movie since Spirit Halloween always has special things for Halloween like big spiders, chains, fake blood (which was a must for us), fog machines, and “bloody” fake limbs.

Spirit Halloween Haul

The first thing we got from Spirit Halloween was fake blood. This is because we wanted to have a scene in this mini film where there was multiple blood splatters so this was a must! Once we got some fake chains, a prop knife, and prop hand, it was clear that this film was going to be one of the best ones we’ve produced so far. 

Once we got home, we set the whole scene up. As soon as we saw the finished product, we were more than happy with the results. We just had to make a couple more tweaks as far as practicing blood splatters to make sure they were perfect. 

The Set

This is what the finished set looks like! We were very proud of this set but once you see the finished movie scene you’ll see that we moved the chair and just hung the fake chains on the “Please help” sign instead. We did this because we felt it looked more realistic. 

Props

After we finished setting everything up, we got together all the props for our killer “Jerry”! Our killer is wearing a very creepy mask and carrying a real wrench that we borrowed from Adrian’s dad. (We were supervised while filming) Here is the mask and wrench in question!

One of our other props were going to be a list with a bunch of chat gpt generated names that our killer would then scratch out the name of the kill he just completed, but we felt that would get us in trouble since it looks very realistic so we scratched that idea! I hope you’re getting excited for this film because it’s going to be great!

Blog 49 - PLANNING: Planning for our 1 minute film

 Planning for our 1 minute film

In class today, we were given the options of doing two trailers, a documentary, a music video, or a one minute film. We chose the 1 minute film, and now we have to make a micro-short film which just includes one scene or moment. We then have to make a festival flyer or postcard, then an instagram mock-up which will be a premiere, countdown, poll, or a Q&A.

Planning

For this film, we want to get it done this upcoming weekend. September 19-21 is our goal to get all aspects of this project done. 

So far, we have our plot of what is 9going to happen, so take a look!

The killer walks into a dark setting (the garage), and grabs a wrench to his right where a work bench is currently setup. After that, he slowly walks to the blindfolded girl that he captured earlier. In the background there will be a poster with multiple names written in black marker. He then slowly walks up to the girl, unblind folds her. She then starts to look at her surroundings, afraid of what will happen next. It then cuts to a blood splatter as the killer hits her in the head with the wrench. The killer then goes and swipes her blood off the floor with his index finger, and marks her name off the board with her blood.

This scene will be filmed in the garage, and we are currently deciding whether or not to make this film a little more gory by the killer putting the body inside a black bag. 

We got our inspiration from Terrifier, as me and Adrian just went to Halloween horror nights featuring Art the Clown. We want to re-create the gory-ness and blood filled movies by following this story line. We think we’ll be able to achieve this with multiple angles, and making the scenes very dark. By making the scenes very dark, we’re able to add the aspect of trouble, danger, and fright. With the blood, we hope to achieve the gore.

Sometime this week (hopefully Friday), we’re going to pass by Spirit Halloween to see if they have any fake blood in stock so we can use that in our film as the blood that the killer uses to cross the girls name off the list. 

I can’t wait to see how this film looks fully edited and I hope you are eager to see the final products as well! 

Blog 48 - PLANNING: Brainstorming

 Brainstorming

Today’s assignment was brainstorming and figuring out what we’re going to do for our final project. Although none of our group decisions are final, we have our main ideas lined up so we can brainstorm on these separate ideas further. Now let’s get into it!

Idea 1

Our first idea is going to have to be the two film trailers. What our group would have to make is 2 trailers for the same fictional film. Then, 1 social media page for the film to be advertised on, along with 1 film poster. 

Our group likes this option because it feels more cinematic and high energy. Dealing with this genre makes it easier to create high quality films and gives us more of an advantage because it gives us a broader range of ideas to work with! We also get to practice variety in media to tease the film in different ways. Shorter clips = easier to reshoot/fix if something goes wrong - which always happens - so this gives us an advantage especially if we start earlier. This focuses on suspense, pacing, music, text overlays, etc, which gives us more aspects of media/film to work with.

Buttttttt, some of the cons are: 

- we wont be able to tell the full story, we’d be just teasing it just like AS level

- needs to look like a real movie promo (which requires lots of editing and mood setting)

- both trailers need to feel different but still connected which makes it harder (it’s almost like making 2 - 2 minute films)

Idea 2

Our second idea (which is the most loved by the whole group) is the short film which is 5 minutes long. We would be making 1 short film, 1 social media page for the short film to be advertised on, and 1 postcard ad for a film festival. 

We like this option the best because you can tell a full story with a beginning, middle, and end. We also have more freedom with characters, plot, and emotions, which gives us more creative advantage for this film. This option is also good for showing off our directing, acting, and storytelling skills (which I think our group is amazing at)

But again, every choice has some cons: 

- Longer shoot (which takes more planning and effort)

- Any bad scenes that we might need to redo are harder to hide because it would take longer to redo a scene

- more footage and longer film = more editing time